A New Look at Leadership Outcomes for Top-Performing Teams

In a recent paper, we argued that a focus on “traditional” team outcomes, such as productivity, quality, attendance or member satisfaction, may not capture what truly happens when leaders and followers are working together at their best.

We have identified four processes that are predictive of the traditional outcomes that most organizations measure to assess success. These processes, however, are focused on how leaders and followers – together – represent the best results of teamwork. We label these synergy, chemistry, presence, and professionalism.

Synergy reflects what performance should look like when leaders and followers together produce outcomes. Synergy is the result of intensive collaboration among leaders and followers, producing output that would otherwise be unattainable.

How do you know if your group has synergy? Responding positively to these questions suggests a synergistic leader-follower collaboration:

• Our leader(s) and our team members work together to produce outcomes that are collaborative.
• Working together, our team achieves extraordinary goals.
• We produce more working together – leader(s) and team members – than we could working apart.

These items suggest a lack of synergy:

• In all honesty, our leader sometimes gets in the way and disrupts our team performance.
• Our leader(s) and team members sometimes work at cross-purposes.

Chemistry is analogous to traditional views of team member satisfaction – satisfaction with the job, the leader, and/or the organization – but focuses more directly on the quality of the leader-follower relationship, and how both leaders and followers feel about it. It comprises subjective experiences of unity, cohesion, and enjoyment produced by the team dynamics and the relationships among leaders and followers.

Consider your work team. Responding positively to these items would suggest high levels of team chemistry:

• Our team members have a strong sense of “ogetherness.
• The levels of trust in our team are very high.
• Our leader and team members work hard to keep everyone engaged.
• Working together, we are the true definition of a team.
• Our leader and team members pull together when we are challenged.

Presence refers to leaders and team members being both physically and mentally present – eager and prepared to contribute to the team’s work, with their attention focused on the collective’s activities. Presence is more than just showing up.

Responding positively to these items would suggest high levels of leader and team member shared presence:

• Our leader and team members always come to work ready to contribute.
• We can always count on our leader and team members to make themselves available when they are needed.
• Our team members and leader are always on time.
• Our leader and team members work hard to keep everyone focused

These items suggest a lack of presence:

• Our team suffers from lots of absenteeism – both physically and mentally.
• I wish our leader and our team members would make themselves more available to me when I need them.

Professionalism goes beyond the mere focus on the team’s output, and looks at whether leaders and followers together have a commitment to producing high-quality work. It is a never-ending pursuit of high standards of excellence on the part of both leaders and followers.

Positive responses to the following items suggest high levels of shared professionalism:

• Our leader and team members have very high standards for our work.
• One thing that I can say about our leader and team is that there are no weak links.
• Our team collectively and consistently produces high-quality work.

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Endorsing these items suggests low levels of professionalism:

• Sometimes it seems that our leader and team members don’t care about doing a good job.
• I am sorry to admit it, but sometimes our team produces low-quality work.

Use these items to do a quick assessment of your team’s shared leader-follower processes and determine if you are indeed a high-performing unit.